


Withering Flowers

by harleighf



Category: Hermitcraft RPF
Genre: Acceptance, Death, Depression, Flower Crowns, Hurt No Comfort, Zombies, cleo uses a cane because i need more disability rep dammit, slight jleo if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:22:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26297833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harleighf/pseuds/harleighf
Summary: Cleo reflects on her life. There isn’t much of it left.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	Withering Flowers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PawPunk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PawPunk/gifts).



Green hands braided the flowers together, carefully, diligently. Slim, nimble hands, making sure she never broke one or stabbed through with her long fingernails. She added another flower, carefully adding it into her collection. She gathered the two stems together, braiding them together before adding another flower on the opposite side. The band of the flower crown never wavered, hands working so carefully. It was ingrained deep into her muscle memory.

Cleo stared down at the stems in her hand. When had she started to braid them, making them into her new crown? Why was she making a crown? How far along was she in making the crown? So many questions ran through the zombies head. She decided not to answer them.

With a sigh, she placed the braided stems down, hoping to not forget where she put them as she stood up, grabbing onto her cane for support. Her joints were old and the muscle and tissue that helped them work smoothly had long since rotted away. It was time for her to eat.

She made her way to her food chest, feeling the stiffness in her legs slowly loosen up. She must have been sitting for a while then. Right foot, cane, left foot. Right foot, cane, left foot. She continued the pattern, noting how her left knee was starting to stop bending as much as it should. 

Opening the chest, her joints groaned louder than the chest itself. Creaky as always, she thought to herself, sighing as she dug through, finding a suitable meal for herself. Raw beef would have to do, though it was old and dried out. Ever since Joe caught her eating his head, she refrained from eating the other collected heads in her arsenal. 

Cleo made her way to her chair, the cane echoing in the underground area of her base. She collapsed into it, taking a deep breath as she tried to calm her heart rate down. Why was it that the simplest of things always made her feel like she was dying again?

She knew the answer. Potions of health and regeneration could only do so much to keep her rotting body stable. Cleo was rotting away, it was only a matter of time until she was bedridden. Taking a bite, she mused more about what to do. She could tell Xisuma, see if he could do some of his coding to slow it down. 

But that would mean she would show vulnerability. Telling the hermits about what was happening to her, she couldn’t. Cleo was expected to be confident, headstrong. If they knew she was rotting away, what would they think? They would pity her, and Cleo didn’t want, or need, anyone’s pity. 

She looked down at her barely skinned hand, gripping the meat as tight as possible. It looked to be just skin and bone, her muscle nonexistent. Any mirrors in her base had long since been destroyed, shattered after she was injured. 

__ _ Cleo had been hanging out with Joe. They were at his winery, with him showing her how he turned his berries into wine. She was standing underneath the overhang of the structure, as he joyfully stomped the berries, explaining the technique of the “olden days” of wine making.  _

__ _ Then a raid party came. Cleo, without thinking, drew her sword, attacking one of the pillagers. Her skin burned in the sunlight, the potion she used wearing off. But what hurt the most was when the gray-faced man hit her with his axe. She screamed as it dug into her face, pulling back into the shade of the winery.  _

It never healed properly. Even after Joe put stitches in, it didn’t heal. She now had to live with the large gash on her right cheek for the rest of her undead life. 

She let out a gentle sob. She discarded the meat, gripping the cane as she couldn’t stop the tears. Why? Why was she cursed to live this life?

She hated this. She hated her life. She hated everything about herself. But she had to get her shit together. ZombieCleo didn’t cry. ZombieCleo, the woman whose body was decaying was with every second that passed didn’t cry. ZombieCleo, who was covered with burns and wounds that would never heal didn’t cry. ZombieCleo who  _ didn’t know her last name didn’t cry _ . 

Her last name was one of the first things she forgot, when her rotting brain deemed that information unimportant. When she had been invited to the server by Joe, that information had long since been lost to time. Her living condition completed her name, becoming her only identity other than Cleo. And that was all she would be known by. 

The clicking of her cane on the cold stone floor bought her back to reality. She hadn’t even realized she was walking. Looking up from the floor, she noticed she was in her bedroom. It was a simple area, just a bed with a chest for when she couldn't manage to get above the ground, which was becoming more common. Eventually Cleo would have to make the journey up, she didn’t want to spend the rest of her time underground. 

She was sitting on her bed now. She sighed, reaching over and pulling out a book and quill, reading over the content for what felt like the millionth time. Even though she knew it by heart at this point, she needed everything in it to be perfect. After all, it was her last will and testament. 

Cleo couldn’t deny that she was dying. If she thought it hurt the first time, this was infinitely worse. The first time, it came as a surprise. This time around, there was no denying it, she just wished it would come sooner. Her eyes scanned each page carefully, her immaculate script laying out what she wished to happen after she was gone. 

Today, she had finally decided what would happen to her most important asset— her zoo. Although she knew that it would be left alongside everything else when the hermits decided to move to a new season, she wanted her memory to still be preserved. The zoo would go to her closest friend, Joe. Though, it wasn’t a surprise by any means that it was he who she would bequeath the structure to. He was the first person she could trust since she had run off her previous server. 

How was it that she forgot everything else, but that? It would be her luck, Cleo mused, placing the journal into her inventory. She knew that today was the day she would make the journey above ground. 

Her half-finished flower crown was lowered into the ground alongside her three months later. 


End file.
